Vanilla Cake with Raspberry Filling and Cream Cheese Frosting
2 – 3 hours
serves: 20-30
I just turned 30! To celebrate, I decided to throw myself a big, five course, dinner party…and let’s talk about dessert! No meal is complete without it, am I right? We served a round of my (semi-famous) Cannelés Bordelais and a 3 Tier Vanilla Cake with Raspberry Filling and Cream Cheese Frosting.
I have been making this cake in one format or another for years now. I keep several jars raspberry jam in stock at all times! In fact, you can find the recipe for my Raspberry Jam here. The raspberry jam soaks into the air bubbles in my dense vanilla sour cream cake and saturates it with even more flavor. Because of this, I prefer to make my cream cheese frosting a bit under-sweetened, so you are not overloaded with sugar. I am an advocate of thin layers of cake, so I slice my cake layers into 1/2 inch slices, so each round is always a 4 layer cake….it brings me raspberry flavored joy! Each slice is the best slice if you don’t have to look for one with enough filling and frosting! Don’t freak out, remember, I said under-sweetened. Better yet, the longer the cake sits in the fridge, the more time the layers have to meld…and the more delicious it is!
I took the leftovers to Philadelphia with me over the weekend, and we enjoyed slicing bits off as we celebrated my Philadelphia book launch on Saturday.
I always want a bit of a challenge, so since each part of this dish was a mainstay in my kitchen, I decided to make a 3 tier cake for my birthday. The cake is dense and stable enough that it will not topple over or sink, so it is a perfect candidate for a layer cake. One of my alumni from Caver gave me a nasturtium over the summer, and I decided to use some of the edible leaves and flowers to decorate my cake. It turned out just as I hoped for!
The recipe below is for a 3 tier cake, I used a 10 inch, 8 inch, and 6 inch spring form pan. If you want to go for a standard 8-9 inch cake, simply prepare 1/3 of the recipe.
I shared our first course, the aperitif course, last week. We made delicious 1789 cocktails and paired them some amazing Olive Crisps served with a Green Olive and Almond Tapenade with some Anchovy for extra flavor and some creamy, and delicious Riclettes de Sardines.
The second course in our meal was the entree course. In France, unlike America, entree does not mean the main meal, but in fact means appetizer…a course that follows an aperitif of drinks and little snacks. For our entree course, we served a trio of (somewhat excessive) delights! We had four dozen Escargot with a shallot and garlic butter, a Duck and Apricot Terrine, and two beautiful Beef Wellingtons.
Ingredients:
- 2 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 cups sour cream
- 3 eggs plus 6 egg yolks
- 4 teaspoons vanilla
- 4 1/2 cup white lily or cake flour
- 4 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 3 sticks unsalted butter
- 2 cups raspberry jam
- for the frosting:
- 3 sticks butter
- 6 8 ounce packs of cream cheese
- sugar to taste, I start off with 1/2 cup and add a bit more at a time until it tastes good to me
- 3 teaspoons vanilla
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- Preheat oven to 375°F.
- Cream butter and sugar in a stand mixer.
- Beat in eggs and sour cream.
- Separately, combine dry ingredients.
- Fold dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
- Butter 3 round cake pans and pour in, leveling the tops
- Bake for 15-25 minutes until golden and skewer comes out with no dough on it.
- Cool completely before slicing each into 4 layers.
- Make and cool jam if making yourself.
- for the cream cheese frosting: beat butter and cream cheese in a mixer. Add vanilla. Add sugar to taste.
- Once cool, add a few tablespoons of jam to each cake layer and spread out all over the surface. Cover with about 1/4 cup of frosting, you are looking for a 1/6-1/4 inch of filling.
Stack another layer of cake and repeat.
Do the same with the smaller tiers.
Carefully stack the tiers together, placing a bit of frosting between the tiers. - Cover the entire cake with a thin coat of frosting and refrigerate for an hour or so until the frosting sets. Leave the remaining frosting on the counter so it remains soft.
- Frost the entire cake with room temperature frosting. Decorate as you like, I decorated with nasturtium.
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Chez Nous 
Happy Birthday and a have great year ahead ! Btw the cake looks so beautiful !!
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Thanks Megala! 🙂 🙂 I hope you are having a great year as well!
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Happy Birthday! The cake looks incredible, I’d make it for a special birthday 🙂
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Thanks! I think I will make it again for my wedding party, that and a smetannik!
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If you make it, the wedding party will be even better, enjoy!.. And Smetannik cake sounds also like a great and delicious idea.. 😀
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Thanks! I will actually be posting the smetannik recipe on Saturday or Sunday. I made it for Thanksgiving, I’m not quite American, but I love having 4 days off work to cook food!
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Can’t wait to read all about it! 🙂
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